Is it time to drop the "it just works" tag?

First of all, a disclaimer. I switched to macs at home years ago, when the anglepoise iMac came out. I was a pc user, and was trying to get some new bit of kit to work, and discovered the crazy land of IRQs. I have zero interest in how to make computers work, I just want to use them. So I switched, and ever since been happy.............until recently.

Of course, it's the small things that are driving me nuts.

1. Home sharing. Was working beautifully, and now doesn't. No idea why not. And of course it stopped after ripping my entire CD collection and all CDs moved to the attic. And after my home music strategy was changed to relying on the mac with the ripped music.

2. Bluetooth. Randomly my MacBook decides that it has no Bluetooth. So I have to put my keyboard and mouse away, dig out the wired versions, and use until the laptop decides that yes, it does indeed have Bluetooth (the MacBook has an external monitor attached most of the time).

3. Bluetooth again. When the MacBook does decide that Bluetooth works, it used to be that the moment I hit a key on the keyboard it would work. Now, it can take seconds. If I spot it, fine. If not, then I have to go back, figure what I was dong.

Ok, all small things in the grand scheme of things, but deeply irritating. It's this sort of stuff that drove me away from PCs. And no, I don't download suspect applications etc. All the applications i use I've used for years so the problems above are not due to me changing the system.

So is it time to drop the tag? Will we start to suffer the PC symptoms of random little problems that take away the sheer pleasure of using OSX?

As a moderator, I would have expected a better reply. As you well know, or would do of you spent 30 seconds browsing hep forums, my points 1 and 2 are very common current faults. I suspect point 3 is linked to 2.

And I would have liked if you'd provided some diagnostic information from your own work instead of just saying "It's not working for me; Apple must be stupid liar-heads."

Umm - never called them stupid liar-heads. Just said the 'it just works' has stopped being true for me, after a decade or so of zero problems.

There isn't too much diagnostics that would help. If you go to google (with auto fill on) and start typing "osx bluetooth" google's top choice to add is 'not working' which would suggest a lot of people have this problem. Indeed, when you do that search there are reams of discussion pages on this issue.

What can I say re diagnostics? the bluetooth icon in the top menu becomes greyed with a wavy line through it. At that point if you go apple/about this mac/more info/bluetooth the message is simply that there is no bluetooth available.

And in my case switching the mac on and off doesn't cure it. At some point my mac decides that yes, after all, it does have bluetooth and the info becomes filled with all the techy data.

Same with home sharing. Start typing that into google and it quickly adds 'not working'. And yes, my firewall is turned off. And yes, my user accounts haven't changed. And yes sharing is switched on. My iphone and ipad simply don't have the shared directory option appear on their respective menus.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Tallest Skil

And IThat I've never had myself nor have I seen pop up here. And this is certainly a help forum. Though your description is too vague to really call them 'points' in and of themselves.

Could you elaborate on these problems? What do you see in the Menu Bar/System Information/System Preferences for point 2, for example?

I don't doubt that you've never had these problems. But as someone who is not a heavy user, doesn't play with system settings, only surfs, mails, uses iphoto and the odd other app nor should I.

And I would have liked if you'd provided some diagnostic information from your own work instead of just saying "It's not working for me; Apple must be stupid liar-heads."

That I've never had myself nor have I seen pop up here. And this is certainly a help forum. Though your description is too vague to really call them 'points' in and of themselves.

Could you elaborate on these problems? What do you see in the Menu Bar/System Information/System Preferences for point 2, for example?

I have to laugh. After replying to you, I got my iPhone and it happened to be in Music. Idly I went to the "more" menu and lo and behold Shared is now in the menu. So it now works.

But, the important thing is that I did nothing to restore it. I haven't rebooted the mac, the iphone, the router. I haven't played with settings, firewalls etc. Nada. I did all that weeks ago with no joy and just gave up.

No, really, he can be extremely helpful an insightful at times. Other times, he can be obnoxious and irritating... Hmm, much like myself, I suppose!

Assuming the BT and sharing items are NOT related, my first suspect for the sharing problems would be the wireless network.

As for Bluetooth... Mine is mostly reliable, except when the microwave oven runs... And it can take several seconds after the oven shuts off for it to reconnect. That, of course, may have no bearing on your situation, but has been my experience.

From out there on the moon, international politics look so petty. You want to grab a politician by the scruff of the neck and drag him a quarter of a million miles out and say, "Look at that!" -...

What can I say re diagnostics? the bluetooth icon in the top menu becomes greyed with a wavy line through it. At that point if you go apple/about this mac/more info/bluetooth the message is simply that there is no bluetooth available.

Ah! I JUST had this happen when booting back to OS X from Windows 8. It has never happened in the three years I've been using this system, and I bet it had something to do with Windows.

I turned it off, took out the daughterboard, unplugged the Bluetooth module, plugged it back in, went in reverse, and it worked.

I've no idea what happened, and I'm sure it was just something where the software didn't initialize properly, but it worked.